Kenneth Shepard’s Top 10 Games Of 2025

Oh hey, it’s been a while since we did one of these. Actually, before we get to my favorite games of 2025, here were my favorite games of 2024 that I was so rudely not allowed to tell y’all about last year. Metaphor: ReFantazio Dragon Age: The Veilguard Mouthwashing Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure 1000xResist Shadow Generations Persona 3 Reload Astro Bot Marvel Rivals Life Is Strange: Double Exposure I tend to get pretty reflective when I write these end-of-year lists. My 2022 list was written mere days after I started here at Kotaku , and my 2023 one was put together shortly after I’d watched the site I’d moved my life across the country for get torn asunder in spite. I imagine my 2024 list would have read similarly, but my 2025 one? I’m maybe a little more hopeful than I’ve been in a while. In 2025, I’ve started to feel my spark come back. I’m writing things I’m proud of, I’m enjoying games like I’ve regained my sense of taste, and every now and again I get riled up about something happening in the industry with a passion that once felt like it had been siphoned out of me. In a roundabout way, my anger at an industry that keeps finding new ways to treat the people in it like they’re disposable is probably a good thing. A year ago, or even six months ago, I might have just let out a defeated sigh and rolled my eyes, then turned back to the blog mines. Now? I can feel my blood boiling again in a way it hasn’t in a long time. There are days when I still feel like I’m getting back on my feet, and like my legs are shaking underneath me as I try to stand tall again. Well, as tall as a 5’3” man can, at least. But if I’m feeling something about the games I’m playing and writing about, that’s an improvement over this time last year, when I wondered if I’d ever feel that again. Here are the 10 games that helped me get my spark back. Honorable mentions: Battle Suit Aces, Absolum, After Love EP 10. Dead Take Dead Take Surgent Studio’s escape room horror game Dead Take was one of the biggest surprises of 2025 for me. Though I find its overreliance on jump scares exhausting, I was enamored with how it captures the horrors of being in a competitive, creative field. During a long exploration of an abandoned mansion after a party he wasn’t invited to, Chase Lowry discovers horrors beyond comprehension behind every locked door(and some captured on USB drives). Even if I’m not an actor, anyone who has worked in a competitive, creative field knows how dangerous people in power with a cult of personality can be. They’ll manipulate people into betraying one another, and the desperate will grovel at their feet in the hopes that some of their prestige and notoriety will trickle down into their hands....

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